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Friday, April 22, 2016

Journalism Is Dead

Not "listicles" per se, the phenomenon of top ten videos by hackneyed outlets such as ScreenRant, WatchMojo, along with the Everything Wrong With and CinemaSins groups are really a scourge to anything related to valid journalism or criticism. Even when being satirical, they fail miserably.

Let's take a look at a recent ScreenRant video. First, the title of the video is "10 Amazing Hidden Easter Eggs in Superhero Movies". We'll soon be asking if ScreenRant knows what an Easter Egg is. For the record: An Easter Egg is an unexpected or undocumented feature in a piece of computer software or on a DVD, included as a joke or a bonus. The term has since been bastardized to now include simple references or inside jokes.

Back to the title. The video says "10 Amazing Hidden Easter Eggs in Superhero Movies" but the title on YouTube is aimed more at being Clickbait by being more inflammatory: "10 Hidden Superhero Movie Easter Eggs You Never Noticed". By saying "You Never Noticed" ScreenRant presents a challenge to the viewer.

Looking at the list, most of these things are items that are little jokes or inside references, nothing "hidden" and no "Easter Eggs".

A reference to Doctor Strange in Spiderman. Yup. Caught that years ago. Thanks. Not hidden. Not an Easter Egg.

Reference to Cat Woman in Batman Begins. Caught that. Thanks. Not hidden. Not an Easter Egg.

Reference to Magneto being Quicksilver's dad in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Caught that. Thanks. Not Hidden. Not an Easter Egg.

Reference to The Black Panther in Iron Man 2. Well, it could be a reference. So maybe that's an Eater Egg? Maybe not.

Reference to the Iron Man cartoon theme in Iron Man. Yup. Caught it. Not sure if that would be considered either hidden or an Easter Egg.

Reference to Sapphire in the Green Lantern movie. Okay, this one might be an Easter Egg.

Reference to issue 121 (the death of Gwen Stacey) in Amazing Spider Man 2. Hey! I would consider that a valid thing!

Reference to Willy Lumpkin in Fantastic Four. Not really an Easter Egg. Just a character that not a lot of people may know.

Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill cameo in Superman. I've known this one for years, I'm not sure if everyone did. But, major points deducted for showing a picture of George Reeves and Phyllis Coates in the video to demonstrate Kirk Alyn and Noel Neill. Even more points deducted because George Reeves had been dead for quite a while before Superman cam out in 1978. I guess the people behind the video forgot about Hollywoodland.

What's worse is the the site Sploid (one of the Gawker family of websites) then teased the "article" with this GIF:

This might have worked better:

Steve Rogers punches Hitler in Captain America: The First Avenger as a reference to the comic book cover. Nice if you know it but not really an Easter Egg.

This bloated list of pedestrian references is nothing compared to just how terrible CinemaSins and Everything Wrong With can be. Here's a wonderful video that explains everything wrong with a typical CinemaSins video: